Korkmaz feels he hasn’t been given a ‘real opportunity’
PHILADELPHIA >> With the 76ers declining their option to extend his rookie contract, Furkan Korkmaz can become a free agent after this season. When he does, he will not be convinced he’d been given a fair chance to show his skills.
“I feel I didn’t really have that opportunity,” Korkmaz said Thursday, before a game against the Los Angeles Clippers. “Last year, I was injured for a long time. And this year, I just had a couple games in garbage time. It wasn’t really good rotation minutes for me. That’s why I feel I didn’t get that real opportunity to show on the court what I’ve got.”
Korkmaz, 21, was a first-round Sixers choice in the 2016, No. 26 overall. After an additional season of playing professionally in Turkey, the 6-foot-7 wing was brought to the Sixers with some acclaim, touted as another critical piece in their rebuilding pro-
cess. A broken foot limited his rookie season to 14 games, and he averaged just 1.6 points.
Though he had a 40-point game against the Celtics the last summer league, generating heightened enthusiasm, Korkmaz has been trapped deep in a playing rotation behind, among others, J.J. Redick, Markelle Fultz and even rookie Landry Shamet.
He had played in five games this season, averaging 0.8 points. That was not enough for the Sixers to pay a required $2.03 million for next season. They could, though, move Korkmaz in trade, something he would welcome.
“I just want to play,” he said. “I just want to get on the court. That’s why I will try to see what my options are right now. If I am not getting minutes here, I just want to look for other options. I don’t know what the other options are at this point.”
The Sixers did pick up their options on Markelle Fultz, Ben Simmons and Dario Saric before the Oct. 31 deadline.
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Not that Saric hasn’t had slow starts in his career, including last year, but the Sixers have been concerned enough about his diminished production this year that they have considered resting him for a game.
“If we had a high volume of practices, would I rest him? Probably,” Brett Brown said. “But we have a high volume of games in a tight period of time. We’re not really practicing much anyways. So our practice sessions are film and study and walkthrough and lifting.
“Has it been discussed about sitting him a game? It has. I don’t believe that it is wise. I believe there is enough rest in between games, and we’re using that rest accordingly to help him. But it has not gotten to the stage that resting him for a game is going to jump-start him back to playing his best basketball.”
Saric, who averaged 14.6 points last season, was averaging 10.5 heading into the Clippers game. His 45.3 shooting percentage from 20172018 had dipped to 34.9 percent. Brown has said the 2016-17 NBA Rookie of the Year runner-up has looked, “heavy legged.”
“He does this,” Brown said. “Go back and look at the start of all of our years. You’re not going to find many years where this isn’t commonplace, where he starts kind of slow. I connect some of the dots to international summer experience. Maybe I’m right. Maybe I’m not. But this is not an outlier. At times, he starts slow. And everybody gets into a funk in an 82-game NBA season. It’s just featured probably a little more with Dario because it is now go time at the start of the season.
“He’s not where he wants to be. But I don’t have any doubt that he is going to start living up to what his resume says he’s achieved.”
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Wilson Chandler, who has not played since the first preseason game due to a left hamstring injury, was scratched again Thursday.
“It’s coming,” Brown said. “I hate nominating a day or a date. But we all feel like it’s really soon.”
Complicating Chandler’s return is that he is 31 and, since the Sixers rarely practice, he will have limited opportunities to play himself back into game shape.
“The loading and the movement and getting up and down the floor and doing stuff that is more basketball movement, he is progressing in that direction,” Brown said. “What that means in relation to when he comes back, I don’t know. But I feel that he is trending in an incredibly positive way.”
••• Clippers coach Doc Rivers has observed the continuing Markelle Fultz project.
“I see a young player trying to find his way,” Rivers said. “I don’t think he’s bothered by that process. Can I use that word? But I don’t know if everyone else is comfortable with it. Some young guys come into the league and they are good right away. Some take a while, and then they find their way. That group, people aren’t usually patient with. But the key for that person is to be patient and realize it is a work in progress.”